A newly-created index of consumer healthcare confidence has fallen steadily this year, reports The Thomson Reuters Consumer Healthcare Sentiment Index. Consumers report declining confidence in their ability to access, use, and pay for healthcare. The index, set at a baseline of 100 in December 2009, is now at 97.
More consumers reported difficulty paying for services and insurance, or reported a reduction or cancellation of their insurance. More delayed or failed to fill a prescription in the past three months or canceled a diagnostic test (such as blood work, X-ray or mammogram). Further, consumers expect the situation to worsen in the next three months, including putting off elective surgery.
Thomson will report figures monthly and has published their methodology online.
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Internist*
FineThanx is a new automated phone system that automatically calls your sick or elderly family members at home to check on how they’re doing.
The system can check in with loved ones once or twice a day, and if no one answers or the person is unwell, the system calls a member of his or her “care circle.”
If everything is fine, the FineThanx system will send you a report by email, so you can continue working or finish those 18 holes of golf, then check in for reassurance on your iPhone or personal computer afterwards.
Dr. Jon LaPook talks to author Lisa Grunwald and psychiatrist Bill Fisher about the history of childrearing as it relates to Grunwald’s new novel “The Irresistible Henry House.”
The guy is Henry House, the title character of my friend Lisa Grunwald’s latest novel, “The Irresistible Henry House,” and in addition to the fact that he’s fictional, he’s not a good bet. Henry knows how to please women — how to talk to them, react to them, how and when to touch them.
The problem is that he is — or at any rate seems to be — utterly incapable of making a true connection with any of them.
Though pure fiction, Henry is based on pure fact: From the 1920s until the end of the 1960s, college home economic classes around the country borrowed infants from orphanages to be used as “practice babies.” I kid you not.
The [recent] massive recall of some of the most popular [children’s] medications is unsettling, disturbing and concerning. Thankfully it was done as a precautionary move before any child was harmed and that there’s a sufficient supply of generic alternatives of the medications recalled.
Still, having 40 popular medications recalled by one of today’s most trusted pharmaceutical manufacturers rocks our confidence in the safeguards in place at the core. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Gwenn Is In*
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